Oregano – aromatic when warm, whether by the sun on a hot day or by stringy mozzarella on a hot pizza
I can always tell when my young daughter has been playing in the Oregano bush in our garden. She makes stories with her small collection of toy reptiles and insects amongst the leaves and when she comes back into the house, the fresh, green fragrance that is Oregano wafts in with her. I found the first flower earlier this week which always makes me think back to when I was pregnant with her, my summer baby.
Summer squash or yellow courgettes – no matter what you call them, big, beautiful flowers and food on the same plant? It’s all win!
Someone once asked me why my favourite colour is yellow “because it’s the colour of sunshine, butter and cheese” I replied. My summer squash is busy growing big, yellow squashes of loveliness but in the meantime it supplies huge, gorgeous, all to quickly gone flowers every morning.
With the Solstice passed, we’ve just tipped over the top of summer in terms of length of days but in meteorological terms, the warmest months of summer are yet to come.
Long, warm days – made even better when the weather decides to water the plants overnight.
And so I love it when morning rain breaks for afternoon sun and droplets bask on wide, green summer squash leaves.
And weigh heavy on petunia petals.
And I hang my washing, ever watching the clouds to make sure the showers aren’t returning.
It’s Friday, you’ve guests arriving in a couple of hours and you get a text saying one of your number is a vegetarian. With the rose/cider/lager sorted and chilling in the fridge and the dips, chips and nibbles all ready to go, a small niggle of doubt rises from somewhere deep. What on earth can you make at this short notice?
Vegetarian summer food at it’s best – we love eating out at this time of year and it’s so easy to go meat free
Puff pastry is your friend even if it’s not exactly the most classy of ingredients. It’s not sophisticated and if, like me, you attended one Tupperware party too many growing up in the 70s and 80s, you’ll shudder at the idea of chicken vol au vents. Let’s call it an ingredient reborn shall we?
Firstly, some make their own puff pastry. Life is too short and wine is too plentiful – so I buy mine, very often frozen because it’s cheaper that way. You can also buy it fresh in blocks or ready rolled. Do make sure that it’s vegetarian – check the ingredients (most are but a few more deli-style pastries might have animal fat in them, just for fun).
If you’ve bought frozen, defrost in a fridge for at least 12 hours. If you choose to take it out of the fridge, to help it along, please remember to put it back in again and chill thoroughly before use (trying to roll out warm pastry is like trying to roll out mud).
Get it to about 3mm thick for a good, crispy texture when cooked. You’ll get four decent 4-slice tarts out of a block and two 4-slices from a ready rolled sheet (and two slices is ample per person).
Then score the pastry 5mm from the edge all the way around – that way, the pastry will rise around the filling.
One I made earlier – you can trim the edges if you like but a bit of wonkiness won’t affect the finished article.
This is the fun bit – getting creative with a few nourishing, flavoursome ingredients. These are my ideas for toppings to make a tart with a little wow factor (and very little effort):
Tomato, feta and basil – this one is dead simple. Place thinly sliced tomato over the base (leaving the edges so that they can rise) and then scatter feta over the top. When the tart has finished cooking, rip a handful of basil leaves over the top and leave for a few minutes for them to wilt gently over the hot topping. Delicious.
Gently caramelised tomatoes meet creamy, salty feta – finished with a little fragrant basil. A vegetarian classic.
This one is a leek (softened in a pan with a little butter first), goats cheese and walnut version – really earthy and satisfying. Great with a few grinds of black pepper and a lovely fresh white wine.
Goats cheese, leek and walnut tart. I love goats cheese and walnuts
And this one is a simple favourite – tomato puree spread sparingly but evenly on the base with mixed chopped vegetables (in this case, courgette and red onion) and then lashings of cheddar. Add a few Italian herbs too if you like, it makes it more like a pizza – my kids can’t get enough of it.
Pizza tart, always a winner and so simple to make (add pepperoni or chorizo for the meat eaters)
To cook: place on baking parchment on an oven tray and bake for around 20 minutes at 200c, gas mark 6. Check after about 15 minutes to make sure nothing is burning.
To serve: green salad is great. I also love this fragrant potato salad – boiled and cooled new potatoes (about 200g per person) tossed with a handful of finely sliced radishes, a finely chopped red onion, a handful of chopped fresh coriander, a glug of olive oil and the juice of a lime. Season with a little salt and black pepper and let everyone dig in!
So simple to make but always a crowd pleaser (and fantastic from the fridge at night Nigella-style – if there’s any left!)
So many toppings, so little time. What’s your favourite? I’d like to add more ideas to my recipe book, so drop me a line and let me know.
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All from Tu at Sainsbury’s. There is less wobble in my go-faster stripe trousers since I bought them back in January but that’s not as important as the muscle I’ve put into them.
I love running. Now, I’m not a born runner and I’m a big girl so when I made the decision to start running back in January this year, I knew that I’d be up against a very special set of circumstances in order to succeed. Six months on, I regularly run 4k and I’m well on my way to being ready for the 5k race I’m training for in October.
How have I got this far? Well, before I started running, I did some rummaging around on the internet for information about what I would encounter as a plus size runner and I found some excellent sources of information (check out The Fat Girl’s Guide to Running and The Running Bug). But there’s nothing like personal experience to help climb the steep learning curve, so if you’re thinking about taking up the sport or you’ve just started, these are my top ten tips for the fat bird running:
DownloadCouch to 5K from the NHS website. Realistically, it should be called ‘Couch to running for 30 minutes’ because I don’t know anyone who has gone from zero to 5K in nine weeks (but plenty who have gone from zero to hero). Listen to a few of the podcasts, familiarise yourself with how it works and know that it’s all about starting out your way, at your own pace, in your own time. I’m a big girl and I did it from beginning to end without missing a week and it’s started a running habit for life. It’s a flexible programme that gets you walking and running in intervals, slowly building your stamina until you can run for thirty minutes. It is doable and if you struggle at any stage, the option is always there to re-try a week until you feel comfortable enough to move on.
Defeat any niggles about your heart or joints by having a chat with your doctor if you’re really concerned. I don’t know a GP in the country who would consider this kind of discussion a waste of time, especially with current concerns with obesity and the NHS. A personal fitness trainer friend of mine suggested running on grass or mud in order to reduce stress on my joints – which is what I often do (and it means I get to run in the countryside, always a happy thing).
I have a pair of Karrimor d30 trainers. They’re lightweight and durable enough for me but do shop around
Buy a really good pair of running shoes – shop around on the net, try a few on and if you can stretch to it, go to a local running shop and get fitted. Supporting your feet, ankles and other joints is imperative if you’re carrying a few extra pounds with you along the track.
Get some comfortable running gear. Sainsbury’s Tu do a range of great running clothes off the peg up to a size 22. If you’re over a size 18 don’t even bother with Sports Direct – it’s just disheartening. J.D. Williams also do running gear up to a size 32 if you’re happy to order off the internet.
Worry about the jiggly bits. Get a really good running bra and be prepared to spend a little on this because it is really worth it. Mine came from Marks and Spencer and I really feel as though I’m well strapped in when I’m running. It does give a bit of an uni-boob effect but believe me, when you’re half way through a 30 minute run, it really doesn’t matter.
Don’t worry about the jiggly bits. If I wobble here or there, or if I feel I’m showing a bit more bum or belly than I would normally be happy with I think of how hard my healthy heart is pumping to keep me moving. Besides, I’m lapping everyone sitting on a sofa or in a car seat.
Be prepared for it to be more than a little bit addictive. I twitch if I haven’t run for a while, I’ve heard my trainers singing to me from the hallway on more than one occasion and sometimes, I choose to swap my Saturday lie in for a blast in the early morning sun. It has to be said that while the slog is sometimes hard work, the buzz afterwards is more than worth it.
Be prepared to be hungry – and respectfully answer the need. I’m carb sensitive, so I find that loading up with bread, pasta or sugar after a run quickly sweeps away the happy feeling but those kinds of foods work for some people – we’re all different. What’s important is that you feed your body good things because it is a good, healthy, strong body. Reward it, don’t deny it and whilst honouring your body with good quality nourishment is the kind thing to do, remember that the occasional doughnut won’t do any damage (but hating yourself afterwards will).
Zingy and bright, oranges are one of my favourite post run snacks – and not because I’m virtuous, I just find them fun to eat
Be prepared to be slow and steady. I can’t run fast, I’m carrying too much weight – I often see lean runners bounding past and I’m not bothered, I just wonder how much bounding they’d do if they had several stone in weight strapped to their body. I eat healthy and build strength in order to run – losing weight is not my focus, it’s just a happy by-product.
Running really is an inclusive sport. Slogging along the riverpath where I usually run, I often meet fellow runners – often girls with ponytails in pairs lithely bouncing along in pretty sports gear or solo, muscly chaps complete with water bottle and strong legs. Far from feeling intimidated, I always get an acknowledging smile for my effort and very often a fist pump too. Watching the runners finishing the recent Polesden 10k race in Surrey was an eye opener – coming over the line were the faces of exalted pensioners, ladies with more than ample bosoms and in fact every kind of person you could imagine – old, young, slim, heavy, tall, short – they’d all taken on the challenge of the Surrey hills and won. All individuals with the same goal – putting one foot in front of the other until the finishing line.
And so, when I went for a medical appointment yesterday and the nurse had recorded my weight, she was genuinely pleased to hear about my running habit. This makes a happy change from being hassled about my weight which I have never enjoyed or found very helpful.
There is so much negativity around weight when in reality, heavy bodies can be strong bodies. They can be beautiful, healthy and worthy bodies. In a culture obsessed with the fat someone is carrying, it is easy to forget the possibility that a healthy heart and lungs can lie within. So while the debate about whether or not it is possible to be fat but fit rattles on, I know I’d rather be breathing in and out in the sunshine rather than crying into a pot of processed, low-fat goo.
In my mind, the movement of the needle on the scales is not as important as the movement of my feet along gravel paths; over hot, summer grass at the park or to some cheesy tunes alongside the river.
But that’s just my opinion.
Finishing the Polesden run with my husband. Pretty chuffed with my 2K achievement, I was bowled over by him completing his arduous 10K trek – we started running at the same time
Is there anything I haven’t thought of – what are your tips? And have you just started running or are about to? How do you feel? I’d love to know.
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…cycling is that not only am I strengthening my body but I’m also saving fuel money and giving myself time to think. The riverpath changes all the time and there’s always something new to hear or see.
The smell of the woodland flowers under the beeches, the sun sparkling off the trickling water, the hope that I’ll catch a glimpse of a Grebe or the Heron.
And the great thing about my big, purple clematis is that it…
…dapples the petunias
The great thing about summer is that it happens around this time every year.
Going home has always been a restorative thing for me. Driving over the Tamar, I take a huge breath of good Cornish air and then another as I circle above my home town of Penryn, where the new Combined Universities in Cornwall has sprung up on the grounds of what was Tremough Convent. Glimpses of the river going out to Falmouth Bay never fail to catch my breath and bring back memories of walking the fields high on the hill with my mother as a child; ripping grass from the verges to feed the horses, fingers stained from blackberry picking. There was less traffic then.
But my story is about Falmouth, where my parents now live. The car park on Fish Strand Quay is one of the best places to see the historic waterfront and it’s one of the first places I head to when I’m home. Half way along is the building that was the Royal British Legion – a building that my Dad has strong links to as did his father before him. It’s now home to the Arwenack Club where my Step Mother is a key player behind the bar. Yes I did spend much time in there with my family over the weekend. Yes, I did drink much beer. Yes I did sing karaoke on Sunday evening. And the quality of music of the Rockabilly band Chrome Deville was matched only by the jivers on the dancefloor. There’s something very special about watching the sunlight fade over the water as the lights of the docks come up – over a pint and some lively banter of course.
This is where WordPress could do with a Smellovision plugin. The lane heading down from where my Dad lives towards Swanpool beach is always vibrant with bluebells at this time of year but it’s the scent of the wild garlic that is overpowering. An evening walk down to the beach with the kids and Buster often involves signet spotting on the pool and a hedgehog ice cream on the Swanpool café decking overlooking the sea. (A hedgehog ice cream involves Cornish ice cream, clotted cream and toasted chopped hazelnuts by the way – it’s heaven’s heart attack in a cone!)
Swanpool beach – St Anthony lighthouse on the other side of the harbour is a pin prick in the distance
Swanpool Beach. This place means much to me. The small specks on the rocks are my son leading his little sister over the rocks – much like my brother used to do with me – and the path leading up on the cliffs towards Gyllingvase was where I used to walk with my Granddad when I was a child and where I sometimes run now. This is also where I used to bring my son after school, many years ago – we’d have tea on the beach and he’d play in the shallows when the heat of the summer day had passed.
Clean, cool air came off the water as I sat and watched the guys fishing off the rocks and the smell of the barbeque their friends had just lit for them just up the beach from me wafted out to sea.
Swanpool beach looking out towards Stack Point
So I did what any girl would do when left alone on a beach in the evening sun – I slipped off my flip flops and buried my toes in the sand.
The next day we drove back. ‘Til August it is then.
I’m feeling excited. Not just because summer is coming but because change is afoot and I like it.
After having seen the fun pictures of fashion blogger Callie Thorpe and friends at Evans’ #stylehasnosize launch last night, I felt something stir from within. It was a feeling of excitement: that a culture of not just body acceptance but body celebration is growing from within the fashion industry and it’s been a long time coming.
Tess causing a storm on the cover of People magazine this week
Add to this, plus size model Tess Holliday’s feature on the cover of People magazine published today. According to her Instagram post this morning, her remit to the magazine was “I wanted show my body off & they listened”. The result? A beautiful woman creatively captured by photographer James White at home in her own body. She was not an unwanted guest there – she was there by choice and it shows.
Like just about every woman I’ve spoken to, my body has never really felt like my own. Granted, I had some special circumstances to deal with – I grew up as part of a controlling religious organisation that dictated just about every aspect of our lives right down to what we thought and how we acted when we were alone. As young women, our bodies were already owned by our future husbands and children and by the congregation for acquiring new recruits and serving the elders. Man-made rules were handed down as the pronouncements of their god. It never quite rang true with me.
So, when I left at 24 and finally got the education I deserved, naturally I had a teensy bit of a leaning towards feminism.
There, I’ve said it. The dirty word that’s been spat out too many times with regard to body issues and obesity. It’s as though the title of Susie Orbach’s totem of a book ‘Fat is a Feminist Issue’ has become an ignorantly misused sound bite for the fat shamers. The loving and taking control of our bodies has become a feminist issue and therefore all about man-hating – like we’re spiders seeking to eat the men that come anywhere near us.
Balls.
They’re our bodies and we want them back because we like them. Incidentally we like men too. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Now, I realise that not every woman has had the same prescribed and damaging upbringing as I had. But I do talk to a lot of women and the same issues keep coming up.
The need to prescribe to a diet – low fat, low carb, no biscuits/cake/chocolate for a month diet. Are you in the Weight Watchers or Slimming World camp?
I’m dieting for my holiday. I’m dieting for my wedding. I’m dieting for my sister’s wedding. It doesn’t matter what the reason is, there is always some external force at work to change the way we look. Somehow this body won’t be acceptable for whatever we are working towards.
I have to lose my baby weight. As if pregnancy, childbirth and the endless sleep deprivation coupled with unbelievable pressure to breast feed isn’t enough (don’t get me started on breasts by the way), then the media is obsessed with dropping the fat ten minutes after you’ve left the labour ward.
A suspended disbelief that one size fits all. If it did, we’d all be wearing the same shoes.
The need to buy and consume what the dieting industry and media are offering, unaware of the irony that our bodies are bought and consumed by the dieting and media industries. Like Tyler Durden in Fight Club says – we are having our own fat sold back to us.
Good grief, this is all starting to sound a little political. Apologies if this isn’t your bag (but if it is, Fat is a Feminist Issue by Susan Orbach is not just a cracking good read, it’s also a practical approach to controlling your weight and The Beauty Mythby Naomi Wolf is also worth checking out).
We’ll return to the fashion bloggers and why what they are doing is so exciting.
I’ve read enough clinical papers, newspaper articles and media sound bites now to know that the medical community are worried about our health. We have a rising obesity problem in the West and the strain this will put on services is causing great concern.
In some minds, frocks to fit a full bust, bigger belts to cinch a waist over rounded hips and a bikini that celebrates rather than hides a gloriously chunky body are going to normalise fatness and make the problem worse.
But don’t they see? Rather than being part of the problem, beautiful, well cut and on-trend clothes are part of the solution.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that I believe we should normalise fatness and please don’t quote me out of context. I believe we should normalise people being comfortable with the aesthetics of their own body – in that they should take ownership of whether or not it is beautiful.
So whether you are fat, thin, dark skinned, pale skinned, male, female, short, stocky, tall, lean or whatever innumerable permutations of the human body apply to you, they are yours and no one should be making money out of telling you that they are ugly and you need to change them.
What about health? Improving health is part of this, it has to be.
So to this end, let’s do something radical and separate health from aesthetics and moral judgement. Lumping these things together is not just insulting it’s profoundly unhelpful.
As I’ve said before, a body that feels strong and cherished is worth taking care of. We can’t all be skinny but we can all tweak our lifestyles (or overhaul them if we chose) to make them happier and healthier. And this doesn’t necessarily have to involve giving our money and self-esteem to a multi-billion pound industry bent on getting us to spend more by hating what we already have.
I digress again.
Back to my excitement.
I am old enough to have lived through the fledgling but influential low-fat movement of the 1980s. Protein came under fire off the back of the food combining adherents of the 1990s and I’m now sitting back and watching the anti-sugar/anti-carb evangelists with some interest and maybe even a little cynical amusement now. As a seasoned 40-year old I can’t say I’ve seen it all but I’ve seen enough to know that things move in cycles, absolute truth doesn’t exist and prescriptive diets are not an effective long term solution for everyone.
My interests have lead me to read so many inspiring, insightful and sometimes utterly radical and frankly confusing books about the body. About how it is so much more than skin, bones and organs – about how society paints meaning onto it, how the image we see in the mirror is not always what’s there and how it is used as a tool to control our choices.
And I feel like we have reached a point where if we see enough images of fuller figured girls wearing bikinis, beautifully tailored clothes and red lipstick, proudly showing off shapely legs and glorious acres of creamy white bust, the aesthetics of this will no longer be wrong, evil and worthy of distaste. In a utopian future, self-body-hatred, which so often leads to a negative relationship with food will be gone, leaving us big bottomed girls to get on with riding our bikes, safe in the knowledge that each heartbeat will be a little stronger than the one before, even if we’re wearing size 20 Lycra. Perhaps next year we’ll be wearing size 18, maybe even a 16 but this will be a by-product rather than a focal point of a healthier lifestyle.
Perhaps this new aesthetic environment will bring a smile to the writers and theorists of my university days – who knows but I like to think that the girls in London this week are edging us closer to our utopia and having a massive amount of fun while they’re doing it.
Notes:
In the film The Full Monty, Gerald says “Fat, David is a feminist issue…I don’t bloody know (what it’s supposed to mean) do I? But it is”. Body dysmorphia and the male body is just as important and I’m sorry I haven’t had the space to include more about this in my blog post.
You’ll notice the bevy of beauties I’m referring to in my post are pretty young women with luscious, bouncing curls, milky skin and wickedly long eyelashes. I realise that some critics, with some justification, will point out that in this they are as much buying into the beauty myth as the rest of the industry but – one step at a time eh?
Weight Watchers, Slimming World and the dieting industry as a whole: prescriptive diets work wonders for some people – they take the weight off and keep it off. For these people, I can only feel joy, it must feel wonderful to feel the benefits of their hard work. It doesn’t work for me and it doesn’t work for others like me – we must find our own way of taking control of our weight. Shaming and name calling isn’t likely to work either.
The first of a series of pieces from the Queen Mother of Small Things. Written over ten years ago now, it was a time when we were helping my Granddad live through terminal cancer. Mum has written a lot about this time in her life.
Woodworm
I am helping Dad in the garage, sorting out his wood for the fire. It is in the middle of July and the weather is cold for him, and there’s a lot of rain about. Dad is feeling miserable and needs some cheering up. He is old and very sick with cancer and it is a matter of a short time and he will be gone from us.
What is upsetting and a long pause for thought, is that this wood he will burn, he has been saving up for forty years. Being a carpenter, he used to make furniture at home in his spare time: tables, bookcases and cabinets to mention a few. So over the years he had acquired a great deal of wood under the floorboards, in the garage and in the outhouse.
Beautiful reddish brown mahogany, yellow-brown teak and various other timbers, all had been saved for better usage. All these off cuts are free from woodworm and still have their original smells.
Now with feeble hands, this wood will go to keep him warm or be given away. The task of cleaning out and getting rid of this wood nobody wants is going to take a long time but it is so urgent for him to sort out his prize possessions. Who has the skill to use it? Who has the room to store it? What is the point of hoarding things up?
So I’m helping him, I’m looking at his tired face and thinking that God in his great love and mercy has stricken mankind with sickness and death.
Dad is chopping, sawing and putting the broken pieces in piles for the fire. I’m nearly in tears and pause again for thought. What is the point in being careful?
Dad is shutting the green garage door and walking up to a small seat by the garage window. The thoughts that are going through his head are of sadness I expect. The day is not that cold but Dad’s illness is playing tricks with him. So I pretend to have a shiver “Let’s go in and light that fire”.
I’m opening the back door for Dad as he carries a small bundle of kindling wood towards the Truburn.
I suppose in days gone by, things were in short supply and they got handed around. But today, in this land of plenty, the old values are long gone. As the old folk die so do their stories – and photos too will be destroyed. Once again, a new age of humans will bring in vast changes.
